


But You Know I Wouldn't Let It

by thatdamnedrogue



Series: sunshine riptide [2]
Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: pretty much all headcanon based
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 09:39:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16637477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdamnedrogue/pseuds/thatdamnedrogue
Summary: A bit of backstory about a certain NPC- mostly headcanon based.





	But You Know I Wouldn't Let It

He hadn’t been sick his whole life-- or if he had, he hadn’t known it. Nor was it the first choking cough that set him off- it wasn’t until coughing hurt his ribs, until there was red in his handkerchief that there was alarm. A mild sense of alarm before a momentary panic- and then the rational side of his brain told him _no, we can handle this_.

And that was where it began. Doctors’ visits, sabbaticals from teaching, longer and longer times away, travelling wherever he could on whatever he had to find someone, anyone who could cure what ailed him. That was, of course, how he heard of Yharnam, and its Healing Church. Rumor was their strange cure- blood ministration, wasn’t it?- could fix _anything_. He thought himself foolish to get so hopeful, but he couldn’t help it. It could cure him- and if it didn’t, then it was just another way that wouldn’t work.

He was nothing if not optimistic.

Others with the same lung-shredding illness were not so bright, but he- he always looked for silver lining. Tried twice as hard when he was knocked down, he didn’t _stop_ moving. Tenacity. Resilience.

Finding a way to Yharnam had not been _easy_ , exactly, but it was invigorating, if only because it made the future all the more enthralling. The possibility of a cure, the excitement that came with going someplace new- truthfully, he’d always had a sort of wanderlust, but he fought to quell it. There was plenty he had to do at home, and his calling had truly been study, had been sharing his knowledge- after all, what good was it if you couldn’t pass it on? And he had no intentions of passing it on in _other_ ways, thus he began to teach those who would learn, and continued learning in his own way.

“We are all of us teachers and students until we die,” he’d heard it somewhere once, and never let the thought go. It was true, in every way- after all, there was no one who knew everything, there was always something to be learned, to be shared, to be known.

Yharnam was thrilling because it was new, it was mysterious, and it held _promise_.

The first day there, he had to fight not to delay, not to get caught up in the sights- it was unlike any city he’d seen before, and yet still somehow so similar, as though he’d been there. He hadn’t, he knew this, but that feeling gnawed at his chest. Or maybe that was just his illness. Illness. With a capital I. Never called it by name, perhaps out of fear- a base fear of what that meant, giving name to the thing that slowly destroyed him…

Now, he had no time for thoughts like that.

He had to keep his head high.

It turned out to be… somewhat difficult to get answers out of the Yharnamites. They weren’t… exactly standoffish, but they were far from friendly. Maybe because he was an Outsider- capital O- here to partake in their town’s Blessed Cure. Probably that, because he could think of no other reason they would be so.

Eventually, after what felt like _eons_ of trying- okay, it wasn’t eons, that was a hyperbole- he found out where to go. Cathedral Ward, they called it, home of the Healing Church. Thus, he set out, telling the nice woman whom he rented a room from that he would return soon. He didn’t know how soon, exactly, because he didn’t know what he needed to do, but he’d figure it out as he went. He had always considered himself fairly adaptable- he didn’t _hate_ change and was often the first to embrace it. When push came to shove, unless it was violently against his own strong beliefs, he met change head on.

It was, perhaps, because of this- or maybe, because of his resilience- that he was not only allowed but _welcomed_ among those who were employed by the Healing Church. They told him about the blood ministrations, in hushed whispers, about how he would have easier time accessing them if he were to join the Hunters.

What did he have to lose?

He agreed to their terms- it sounded simple enough. Find and kill Beasts. No one outside of these other Hunters would have to know the burden they all bore. He would never tell anyone- no, not even when the realization that these Beasts were not so as they appeared, when he told them he couldn’t do anymore and returned to his rented home with the intent of leaving. Not even when the cough returned, worse than it had been.

He kept it to himself, even as he felt his strength draining away day after day. He couldn’t return home- he had no strength to find a carriage to take him back, to take him anywhere away from Yharnam. Every day, the wet cough grew worse, every day the handkerchief he carried became more and more stained. The landlady… she seemed to have abandoned him. Oh, sure, he could hear her moving about above, but she never came to check on him, she never spoke to him since his return. Had retiring from that dreadful work brought this upon him? He supposed, ultimately, it didn’t matter. He was sick. He was _dying_.

There was a silver lining in this- he could die human. Alone, perhaps, but human, and he was at peace with that. Well, mostly so- the thought of dying alone hadn’t been a foreign one, but dying alone in a city that had turned its back on him (or did he turn his back on it?)... that wasn’t exactly a desire. It was in this debate, trying to decide what he was going to do, if he could get the strength to do anything, when his thoughts were interrupted. He knew that scent, a strange but not unfamiliar one-

The scent of a Hunter.

A Hunter, at his window? They’d all but vanished as of late, it seemed. Shifting in his chair, the man coughed a few times before he managed words.

“Oh...you must be a Hunter, and not one from around here either...I’m Gilbert, a fellow outsider...”

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Alright so this chapter is mostly inference from what we’ve seen in game: Gilbert, that wonderful Scotsman, turns into a beast after Rom’s death. A beast like the kind you find in Old Yharnam, implicating that perhaps he’d been exposed to a different strain of the scourge. Not only that, he gives the Hunter a Flamesprayer- a weapon on the Healing Church- though he says he did not get much use from it. Additionally, in the Hunter’s Nightmare, there is a Hunter out the left of the house situated next to the River of Blood. This Hunter uses the Beast Claws, and as my roommate pointed out…. He spawns outside of Gilbert’s window in the Nightmare.
> 
> So I wanted to write a thing with my thoughts on that wonderful fellow and his role in Yharnam. It’s a little disjointed and for that I apologize.


End file.
